The easy but fun science of energy is what powers our world and our lives. There are many different kinds of energy. There's electric energy, which our houses use to turn into light energy for the bulbs. There's the energy our bodies get from food which helps make us strong and allows us to run and play, and there are many other types of energy.
Heat energy is one type of energy that we can get from electricity or light. Another source of heat energy is the sun. Heat energy is at work when something that is cold starts to become hot. For an easy but fun science experiment, touch a light bulb that is off, you will feel that the glass of the bulb is cool to the touch. Turn the bulb on and leave it on for a few minutes. When you touch it again, you will find that the bulb is now hot. Heat energy from the light turned the bulb from cool to hot!
We use heat energy more often than we imagine. During the winter, the heaters in our homes keep us from becoming too cold and getting sick. We also use heat energy to heat the water for out baths. When we cook, heat energy is used to make the food hot. The science of heat energy is an easy but fun science that we can see at work in our everyday lives.
The easy but fun science project under this section shows us how heat energy works on water. There are three types of water. These types are: solid ice, liquid water, and water vapor which is in the form of gas. When we use heat energy on solid ice, the cold ice becomes hot. As the ice becomes hot, it starts to break down and it turns into liquid water. It is melting. The same thing happens to our ice cream in the sun. You will notice that the time it takes to turn ice into water is not too long.
After the ice has turned completely to water, heat energy is still at work. The water will stay water for a while, but you will see the water becoming less and less. This is because the heat energy from the sun will make the water hotter and hotter. When the water becomes hot, it turns into water vapor, the gas form of water. The easy but fun science project will ask you to record the time it takes for this to happen to water, and other cold objects.
Did you know that the earth has its very own heat energy? Deep inside the earth there is heat energy that we can use to make electric energy, light, sound, and other kinds of energy! See how powerful heat energy is?!